12 minute read
Culture
Fototeca Nacho López / inpi / Ricardo Moura
Mario Humberto Ruz Sosa*
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The Cultural Languages of Nature Other Voices in the Maya World
The 30 or so Maya peoples who have survived until our day occupy a world as vast as it is full of wonders. 1 Its signs and symbols are very diverse, al
though often quite close in their meanings, since the descriptions and analyses of morphology, habitats, customs, and attributes of real or marvelous animals, minor deities, and other supernatural beings are part of a taxonomy full of literal, allegorical, and moral meanings. Whether convergent or divergent, these signs and symbols are subjected to cultural reads that determine the way of looking at the world, domesticating it, and living with it.
Other reads, other voices, speak to entities that the Maya consider we share natural and supernatural spaces with; entities in many cases deeply rooted in Mesoamerica, which sometimes combine with the products of baroque curiosity and the “Christianization” of symbols that took place during the Renaissance, to integrate a complex text
that simultaneously writes in past, present, and future, and
whose interpretation passes through a culturally deter
mined read.
World-book, universe-text, which from millennia ago
has not stopped being written and whose reading is dif
ferent every time, since they are singular readings that in
volve reconfiguring the constellation of the memory, which
demands reading it with new eyes, different from what eyes
like our own can attempt, since they often overflow the
containers where the West today deposits the memory,
making a privilege of writing and dismissing other forms
of registration that may be equally valuable and that, in fact, have been equally valuable in other eras. 2
It is by no means strange that, even in different forms, the Maya go through their lives today paying attention to nature’s signs and advisories, bestowing meanings on the elements they are in continual contact with. The slightest variation, the most insignificant exception in the behav
ior of the nature around them, is an indication of an
event, a change. Throughout their days, the Maya read the
nature surrounding them, interpreting it with ancestral
memory. But, they are not mere passive readers; they can
elicit and establish a profound dialogue with it. They listen
and speak, ask and offer, when they know that they are
dealing with its gifts and reciprocal gifts. At times, how
ever, they know that the intricate nature of the text re
quires a more experienced reader, and that is why they
must resort to a specialist; while at other times, they lim
it themselves to waiting because they have learned from
common knowledge that, in the face of some advisories,
“nothing more can be done.” The only possible option is
to accept that the time loaned to them is over, and it is
time to return to the primal mother.
Until that moment arrives, the code of the social mem
ory helps them interpret both the common and the ex
traordinary in day-to-day living. And the thing is, as you
frequently hear in the countryside, “It’s not just that; it’s
not just that.” Things do not happen without a reason. It
is not by chance that a bird sings its portent of illness or
death precisely in front of a given house, or that leads a
coyote or a deer to cross the streets of the town in the mid
dle of the day, carrying an often ill-fated message.
In fact, not even the scenery that we see when we
move through the vast lands where these Maya peoples
live is the same as what they see. Although they pass by
us, we are not capable of reading the messages that certain
plants bring with them, or perceive the vagabond skel
etons like the Ch’ol chechebak, the Tojolobal jimjim’echmal,
the “bony woman” of the Yucatán Peninsula, the okinamá
heads that roll down the roads, or the legs that bleed on Yucatecan plazas like Ekmul’s. 3 Our eyes are blind to the serpents with wings or manes, 4 water dragons, the sirens
of the lakes, or the “mothers of cacao,” who protect the precious almond of the mountain and Tabasco’s Chontalpa region.
And there are also celestial singularities. So, a Kaqchikel does not see a Milky Way in the heavens, a road of milk
The Maya read nature around them, interpreting it with ancestral memory; they are able to elicit and establish a profound dialogue with it.
spilling from the breast of the goddess Hera to nurse Her
cules with, as the Greeks and Romans did, but rather a
Ru bey palama, a road of the sea tortoise, associated with the track it leaves when it moves through the sand. 5 And
a Tojolabal does not see in the firmament the “little eyes
of Santa Lucía,” but rather a pair of “deer eyes”; and he
also does not conceive of shooting stars, but rather the
excrement of those shining beings who live on the stars
and that, when it falls to earth, becomes obsidian, also
called defecation of a star, or k’oy kanal.
Without us noticing, tiny imps, blacks with outsized
penises, and formidable tsuk it, who have only one arm and
one leg and lack anuses, move about, while in Tseltal lands
wander the fearsome lab, the embodiment of Jesuits, re
ligious, bishops’ deputies, and bishops hunting spirits to
devour; and in the mountains the wilikok midgets meander
with inverted feet. In the same way that the giant ua’ay
kot walk along Yucatán’s walls —one foot on each, because
they choose the parallel ones—, those same walls where
lovers of tradition lay out food and offerings to tiny imps
like the aluxo’ob and terrifying nocturnal personifica
tions like the jaguars; those same walls where a kakasbal
might lean, with his monstrous hair-covered body, his hun
dreds of feet and arms ending in crow talons, and monkey balls hanging in clusters. 6
No matter how we try, we cannot perceive them. Even
though our retinas have similar cones and rod cells, we are
not culturally trained to see them; nor are our ears —no
matter how hard we listen— capable of hearing and in
terpreting with the subtlety required the murmur pro
duced by the leaden wings, bristling with small, razor-sharp
slivers of flint of flesh-eating birds like the Uay pop or
other voices of nature. Our touch cannot feel the texture
of certain winds. How could we, without having been cul
turally educated, hear that “noise of the waters that run
without making noise” or “run the [placid] waters in silen
ce,” as the Tseltal language so exquisitely expresses the word tzananet? 7
It is the exclusive privilege of the Maya to fully interpret the nature surrounding us; to make it comprehensible, domesticate it, read it, and propose different visions. Because landscape is clearly text susceptible of many readings; readings that, whether we know it or not, are done through a cultural present, pregnant with collective historical memory, which usually transmits the oral tradition, expressing personal experiences or communal myths
that can date back to creation itself, capable of manifesting themselves in dress, as shown by certain Maya huipil tops that feature planes of the cosmos, cycles of maize growth, or real or fantastic animals, or perpetuate themselves through ritual. Whether we say it or not, those rituals centered on maize, the sustenance of Man, forger of his flesh and architect of his bones, are at the same time the guardian of the spirit —it is not by chance that the Tseltal of Bachajón, Chiapas continue to leave an ear of corn next to a baby to prevent an evil being from stealing its soul. An authentic hierophany of the deity with which a mystical relationship existed and exists; that accompanies the individual from birth to grave, since some groups continue to cut their children’s umbilical cord over an ear of corn and sow the child’s first cornfield with the bloodstained kernels; and others place kernels or beverages made with the precious grain in the mouth of their dead. Or place on the breast of a dead mother an ear of corn for every child she leaves behind, so she will not miss them. . .
A grain of origin, linked to the divine as shown not only by mythology, but even by historical linguistics, since Maya texts from the colonial period like the Chilam Balam mention “divine grace,” even using the term in Spanish. This is, in effect, the “grace,” the evangelizers conceived as the gift of the deity, that makes it possible for the Christian to be fully Christian, that allows him, after death, to accede to blessedness. But, when the Maya texts speak of “grace,” they are referring euphemistically to maize. The theologians’ “grace” is an intangible, non-corporeal gift, a timeless well-being, personal, and out of this world; that of the Maya has another, tangible corporeal meaning: collective, daily, Earth-bound pleasure.
And even in the Great Beyond, the landscapes are different. Do the Tsotsil not speak of gardens where nursing babies suckle on the breasts hanging from a ceiba (a silkcotton tree, the equivalent to the Nahua Chichihualcuauhco and identical to the ceiba Landa described for the sixteenthcentury Yucatecans), while the dead children of the Achi from Rabinal, metamorphosed into butterflies or hummingbirds, drink from the flowers? Do the Tseltal not affirm that in the sacred ch’iibal mountains, a parallel world where souls are watched over, nurseries of girlchild-souls are kept? Are not those caves in which those who sold their soul to the Owner of the Hills labor healing deer wounded by hunters with bad aim common in Maya
Today, a Tsotsil may narrate how Jesus Christ comes down out of a plane to visit men, while a Tseltal will describe the ch’iibal mountains as having not only cornfields, but also helicopters.
world views? And what of the mirror-towns that lie be
neath the lakes of the Guatemalan West, watching over the dead of the lakeside communities? 8
There are even places where our familiar order is reversed, and it is not men who govern, but who are judged. So, in the language of the Kaqchikel of Santa Catarina Palopó, “In the other world, the animals rule. Thus, like here on the Earth where men rule, there the animals do. In the other world, just like on the Earth, there are mayors, aldermen, city councilmen. The xoch [owl] is the police commissioner, and the other animals hold other posts.” This opinion was shared by Don Sebastián Ordóñez, an outstanding Mam Ixtahucan wise man (†), who spoke to me about an Animal Council that meets in the hills “every four or five days,” and is responsible for judging and punishing human beings who mistreat animals.
Given that the landscapes of the imaginary have memories —in fact, they are memory—, the meaning of not a few messages is obvious: the adulterer, the gossip, the drunkard, the night-owl, he who hunts excessively or attacks young animals, or he who is irreverent or disrespectful all clearly know what to expect when this or that being reveals itself to them with their centuries-old exempla. Dealing with the possible consequences, however, may require specialized help. Not just any human is capable of holding the necessary dialogue; direct exchange with the supernatural demands not only strength, diplomacy, and aplomb, but also a special state of grace that the very deities bestow. This specialist, called a chimán, balbastix, h-men, chichqajau, aj’quin, and a long etcetera, will then resort to his own forms of memory.
Forms that are not even immutable. Some indigenous writings from the colonial era tell us about how the Maya peoples, descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, left Babilonia; how their languages were born at the same time that the Tower of Babel was collapsing; how their leader, Balám Quitzé, opened the waters of the great sea with his staff; and, in Chilam Balam, conflate the Antichrist
with the Spaniard, “[who] sucked dry the poor Indian.”
Today, a Tsotsil may narrate how Jesus Christ comes down
out of a plane to visit men, while a Tseltal will describe the
ch’iibal mountains (the parallel world mentioned above) as having not only cornfields, but also helicopters, com
puters, and televisions, and a Maya from Campeche will identify the Antichrist with the plumed serpent. 9
Disturbingly up to date, the Maya live amidst a continual updating that cannot allow anyone to ignore the cybernetic changes or escape the buffeting of globalization. Does not a Quiché association use video-cameras and laptops to log the memories of their elders? Have the Maya from Quintana Roo not changed the objects linked to the cornfields and housework that were given to infants during the hetz mek ceremony, replacing them with English dictionaries and small plastic computers, without doubt more useful for their children’s future work lives that seem inevitably tied to the service sector in Cancún and the Maya Riviera? Have not certain Protestant Maya from southern Yucatán opted to ask their pastors for a ceremony equivalent to the ancient ch’a cháak, a supplication for rain, next to an irrigation pump. Tradition and modernity, telescoped.
Determined to remain, the Maya peoples are putting their trust in re-creating their memory, abandoning, rearranging, mystifying, and even inventing meanings and signifiers, with the dual intent of invoking what has been forgotten and continually updating their own and others’ versions of the past, in order to make them not a mere recounting of memory, but an authentic program for the future.
Notes
1 Located mainly in what are now Belize, Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala, but also, due to emigration, in growing numbers in the
United States and Canada. 2 Jean-Claude Schmitt speaks of this in La raison des gestes dans l’Occident médiéval (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), as does Simon Schama in Landscape and Memory (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995), among various others. 3 Terry Rugeley, De milagros y sabios. Religión y culturas populares en el sureste de México, 1800-1876 (Mérida, Yucatán: uady, 2012), p. 79. 4 Roldán Peniche Barrera, El libro de los fantasmas mayas (Mérida,
Yucatán: Maldonado Editores, 1992), pp. 100-101. 5 René Acuña, ed., Fray Thomás de Coto, Thesaurus verborum. Vocabulario de la lengua cakchiquel vel guatemalteca (Mexico City: unam, 1983), p. 223. Certain colonial sources identify the tortoises called
Yax Coc Ah Mut or Yax Cocay Mut as Gemini. 6 Peniche, op. cit., p. 61. 7 Domingo de Ara, Vocabulario de lengua tzendal según el orden de Copanabastla, Mario Humberto Ruz, ed. (Mexico City: unam, iifl, 1986), p. 395. 8 Perla Petrich, “Tipología nocturna en los pueblos de Atitlán,” in
Alain Breton, A. Monod, and Mario Humberto Ruz, eds., Los espacios mayas: representaciones, usos, creencias (Mexico City: unam, iifl, and cnrs, 2002). 9 Pedro Pitarch, Ch’ulel: una etnografía de las almas tzeltales (Mexico
City: fce, 1996); Manuel Gutiérrez Estévez, “De la conversación yucateca al diálogo cristiano y viceversa,” in De palabra y obra en el Nuevo Mundo (Madrid: Siglo xxi de España, 1995) pp. 171-234.
